Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi

Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi (before 1910)

Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi (born March 17, 1833 in Mainz ; † February 8, 1910 in Wiesbaden ) was a German writer, free thinker and suffragette.

Life

Hedwig Karoline Berta Henrich was born as the daughter of the Catholic general and theater doctor Kaspar Henrich from Mainz and the Protestant pastor's daughter from Lorch , actress and later writer Albertine Henrich, who wrote under the pseudonym Paul Stein in Mainz. She received a Catholic education.

She wrote the drama "Virginia", which was performed several times in Mainz in 1853 , at the age of about eighteen. The play received great audiences and made the young author known in her hometown. More plays were to follow. The comedy “The Prisoners”, for example, was performed thirteen times in Hamburg from January 1854 in front of a sold-out house and in Oldenburg in 1858/59. In addition to the stage plays, she wrote poetry and around 1855 two short treatises. By the age of fourteen she is said to have written a novella. In fact, it was later published as a short story in 1854 under the title "Schuld wants atonement".

In September 1853 she married the merchant and factory owner Philipp Ferdinand Wilhelmi from Edenkoben . A little later, his paper mill near Schriesheim burned down twice. With financial support, he was able to acquire a paper mill in Granada . In autumn 1858, after the birth of their daughter Berta (1858–1934), the couple moved to Andalusia. Together with a partner, Wilhelmi last operated three factories in the Granada area and became consul of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Her son Louis was born in 1863 and she evidently brought up and taught her children herself before hiring a German tutor. The Wilhelmis' house became a meeting place for Spanish intellectuals and poets such as Pedro Antonio de Alarcón , José de Castro y Serrano, Benito Pérez Galdós and others. Visitors also came from German-speaking countries, for example Otto von Camphausen , Alfred Brehm and Rudolf von Austria-Hungary stayed with them for a long time. From Spain, Henrich-Wilhelmi first began to write cultural and historical travel reports for German newspapers. Occasionally she translated Spanish writers like Joan Palou i Coll, or Francisco Suner y Capdevila.

For reasons unknown, Hedwig traveled to Darmstadt with both children in 1866. It is possible that she temporarily handed over her son Louis to his mother there. From there she went on to Stuttgart, where she visited Albert Dulk and Ludwig Pfau . She let her daughter attend school in Stuttgart. She also visited Hermann Kurz's family in Tübingen before returning to Spain with her children. A sore throat in her daughter Berta took her again to Tübingen in April 1870, where the daughter was operated on. Surprised by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War , she immediately traveled to Geneva , where she met Johann Philipp Becker . She only returned to Granada at the end of 1871. During these years she had developed into a free-spirited thinker and supporter of social movements, as well as the emerging women's movement of the 19th century. In the following years she traveled frequently to Germany, probably also because her children received their further education there. So son Louis attended the Polytechnic in Dresden. But after her daughter's marriage in Granada and her son's death in 1884, she returned to Germany for a long time, initially to Stuttgart. Here she was once again accepted by the Dulk, whom she admired, and in the local free-thinking association that he has directed since 1882. Dulk died in October 1884, but it was not least because of him that Henrich-Wilhelmi began her lively lecturing activities in the service of free-thinking and social democracy. Over the next ten years she gave many lectures and published several of them as printed manuscripts in small editions. Including the right of women to study and their qualifications for all types of professions . Her commitment to women's rights was always present during her lecture tours. A lecture in Liegnitz, however, on the subject of scientific and moral materialism was banned in March 1887 with reference to the Socialist Law . She had already clashed with Adolf Stoecker and the anti-Semitic Berlin movement in Berlin . Between 1887 and 1889 she gave numerous lectures in the United States of America . Her appearances there attracted considerable attention not only in freethinking circles. Back in Germany, she moved in with Albert Dulks' widow in Stuttgart. A little later, she was in Hagen because of blasphemy and sentenced to two months in prison in 1891, she in Hechingen was serving.

After her release, she traveled to the United States again in 1892. On this lecture tour, she sustained a foot injury after a meeting. The wound was treated poorly, she returned to Europe and had an operation in Antwerp without her condition improving. She was unable to walk for the rest of her life. Nevertheless, for the next four years she continued her work as a restless speaker in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. For health reasons and because the official party doctrine of social democracy according to the Socialist Law declared religions and world views to be a private matter and thus also distanced themselves from free thinking, their lecture tours inevitably decreased. However, she declined an offer from American friends to move. Among them, it was in particular Clara Neymann, who was born in Karlsruhe from New York (1840–1931), who had made friendly contact with Henrich-Wilhelmi in Stuttgart in the summer of 1885 on her trip to Europe. In 1897 she moved her apartment within Stuttgart from Untertürkheim to Degerloch , where she came into close contact with her future biographer Friedrich Wilhelm Gerling.

After her husband died in 1896, she visited her daughter who was married in Granada several times. She also returned to literature. The five-act drama A Sinner was best known . She also tried to adapt the unpublished play Brigitte by Albert Dulk, which, however, was neither published nor performed in its rework. Only Gerling can tell of a comedy with the title Die Erbtante .

She moved her apartment from Degerloch to the Munich district of Moosach before moving to Wiesbaden. Around 1905 her speech disorders and right-sided paralysis manifested itself in her. She died in Wiesbaden at the age of 77. The German-American writer Otto Soubron from Milwaukee dedicated a poetic obituary to her.

Her daughter Berta, who lives in Andalusia and is married, has been rediscovered by regional historiography in recent decades as a significant feminist, educator and philanthropist.

Friendship with the Kurz family

In the memories from my youth Country of Isolde Kurz , as well as in the printed diaries of her mother short-Marie , a lot about Hedwig Henrichs lifelong friendship with the family is to experience short-short since 1852, and especially to Marie. Everyday, banal and personal things are revealed alongside political clues. Henrich-Wilhelmi, smoking and drinking, was an “unheard of exception in the women's world of that time”, and mostly discussed passionately among men. Or her daughter Berta was dancing Fandango and racing through the rooms with the clatter of castanets. During one of Berta's later visits (1875), she took part in a “hashish adventure” and all of the Isoldes brothers were in love with her. Shortly thereafter, in place of the deposed governor of Granada, she should have been the elected, “most beautiful girl in town, to preside over a great bullfight”. Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi also always dressed youthfully and elegantly according to Parisian fashion, at least in the 1860s. The exotic appearance of mother and daughter Wilhelmi in the Swabian provinces certainly contributed to these somewhat colored memories. On the other hand, the chronological sequence and the reasons for Henrich-Wilhelmi's visits become more tangible. Likewise the political contacts, for example with Édouard Vaillant , with whom she traveled from Tübingen to Geneva immediately after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and made the pioneering acquaintance of Johann Philipp Becker there. The close friendship with the Kurz family seems to have developed through their contacts with the Henrich-Wilhelmis relatives.

Literarily unexplained

Robert Eduard Prutz reported in his literary magazine Deutsches Museum in September 1865 that Hedwig Henrich had sent the drama Die Glocke von Almudaina to German theaters. It was her free adaptation of the piece La campana de la Almudaina, which was particularly successful in Madrid, based on the Spanish by Joan Palou i Coll. However, the German adaptation was not played in any theater, even if the translation, printed in a few copies, can still be found in individual libraries. In April 1890 the opera Die Almohaden or Die Glocke von Almudaina by the retired Württemberg court conductor and composer Johann Joseph Abert premiered in Leipzig. The libretto was written with great skill, according to contemporary sources. However, who wrote the libretto remained uncertain. On the one hand, the Stuttgart publisher Adolf von Kröner is mentioned , and on the other, a completely stranger named Arnold Kasten, who in 1887 still published the multi-part story Magdalena in Kröner's Die Gartenlaube , nothing more. Apparently, Kasten was a pseudonym. In fact, Adolf Kröner and two other authors wrote the libretto for Abert's setting of Joseph Victor von Scheffels Ekkehard , but it is more than questionable whether he alone can be considered the author of the far more accomplished libretto of the opera Die Almohaden , which is also a free translation. In view of the conditions in Stuttgart, also because Abert had set King Enzio by Albert Dulk to music for a long time and Henrich-Wilhelmi lived with Dulk's widow around 1890, it must be assumed with certainty that the libretto or the text for Abert's opera was essentially by Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi comes from. But why her name was not mentioned, or why she possibly switched to the pseudonym Arnold Kasten, can only be explained by the fact that a freethinking and socialist agitating woman - and this during the Socialist Act - was not a socially acceptable author for court stage operas.

Works

stories

• Guilt wants atonement . In: Illustrated family book for entertainment and instruction in domestic circles, Volume IV, Triest 1854, pp. 165–173. Online: [4]

Stage plays

• Virginia . Tragedy. With an appendix of poems, Stuttgart 1853, JB Metzler'sche Buchhandlung. Online: [5]
• Maria Padilla , Drama (according to Sophie Pataky, no evidence possible, possibly only handwritten)
• The Turk in Petersburg, or as Katharina makes peace , comedy in five acts, Heidelberg 1854
• The prisoners, or: An intrigue at the court of Louis XIV. , Comedy (printed as a stage manuscript, publisher unknown)
• Brigitte , play in three acts and a prelude, Hanover, Edmund May theater agency
• A sinner , drama in five acts, Leipzig 1896, Ernst Wiest successor

Travel reports from Spain and translations

• At this point, detailed evidence of their articles, which can be described in the broadest sense as travel reports, are partly multi-part articles. All articles found are available online: [6] ; [7] ; [8] ; [9] ; [10] ; [11] ; [12] ; [13] ;

• A look into four centuries of Spanish life , in Gerling, Volume 1, pp. 39–51. According to Gerling, a manuscript from a later period.
• God , by Francisco Suner y Capdevila. From the Spanish with an introduction by Hedwig Henrich, Zurich 1872, Verlag-Magazin

Books and lectures

• The right of women to study and their qualifications for all types of professions , Berlin 1894, W. Rubenow
• The concept of blasphemy , lecture, report on arrest, profile and conviction of Mrs. Henrich-Wilhelmi, Berlin 1891, W. Rubenow
• Free will , lecture, Reichenberg 1894, J. Beranek
• The human being the product of his upbringing , lecture, Stuttgart 1884, Christmann and Mauser, publishing house of the freethinker community
• Collected Lectures , Milwaukee 1889, Freethinker Publishing Cie. Online: [14]
• Is religion a private matter? , Lecture, Berlin 1894, W. Rubenow
• Physical and intellectual proletariat , Leipzig, Ernst Wiest successor
• Physical and moral courage , Leipzig, Ernst Wiest successor
• Death u. Cremation , lecture, Stuttgart 1883, Christmann and Mauser, Verlag der Freidenkergemeinde

literature

• Henrich-Wilhelmi, Mrs. Hedwig . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, pp. 334-336 ( digitized version).
• Friedrich Wilhelm Gerling (ed.): Life and work of Mrs. Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi. Poems, essays and lectures , 2 volumes, Verlag des Deutschen Freidenkerbundes, Munich 1910. Volume 1 contains: Curriculum Vitae and Activities , pp. 3–23

Web links

• Works by Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi in the Gutenberg-DE project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Landeshauptstadt Mainz (Ed.): View of Mainz Women's History , in-house printing of the city of Mainz, 2012, p. 47 ( online as pdf )
2. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Gerling: Life and Work of Mrs. Hedwig Henrich-Wilhelmi , Volume 1, Munich 1910, p. 4
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Henrich-Wilhelmi, Mrs. Hedwig . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, pp. 334-336 ( digitized version ).
4. ↑ Cf. Didaskalia. Leaves for Mind, Mind and Publicity , February 27, 1854, category: Literature and Art Notes. Online: [1] . Compare with Oldenburg: [2]
5. ↑ Gerling, pp. 2 and 6
6. ↑ Gerling, p. 10
7. ↑ Gerling, p. 11
8. ↑ Gerling, p. 12
9. ↑ Gerling, p. 12
10. ↑ Sebastian Prüfer: Socialism instead of religion. The German Social Democracy Before the Religious Question 1863-1890 , Göttingen 2002, p. 76
11. ↑ Gerling, p. 14
12. ↑ Gerling, p. 17
13. ↑ Michaela Bank: Women of two countries: German-American women, women's rights and nativism, 1848–1890 , New York and Oxford 2012, p. 147
14. ↑ Gerling, p. 20
15. ↑ Astrid Schweimler: Albert Friedrich Benno Dulk (1819 - 1884). A playwright as a trailblazer for social emancipation , Giessen 1998, p. 120f; P. 178, note 23; P. 197
16. ↑ Gerling, p. 22f. Also reprinted by Elke Gensler without a statement of responsibility: Unbelief is the first step towards wisdom . In: This side. Journal of the Humanist Association, 2nd quarter, No. 87/2009, pp. 28–31. Online: [3]
17. ↑ P. Ballarín Domingo: Feminismo, educación y filantropía en la Granada de entresiglos: Berta Wilhelmi , in: Balarín, Pilar; Ortiz, Teresa (ed.): La mujer en Andalucia, Universidad Granada 1990, pp. 341-356
18. ↑ Susanne Kord: A look behind the scenes. German-speaking female dramatists in the 18th and 19th centuries , Stuttgart 1992, p. 438